Nuvota

So, here’s a typical day for me: In the morning, I read a bunch of interesting blog posts that are send to me via email. I go to the actual website of the most interesting posts and add them to my delicious account (a social bookmarking tool). Next, I’ll do some research on the web for projects I am currently working on. Typically, I find bits and pieces of interesting information here and there – so I copy the paragraphs into an open word document. Next, I will have a meeting with a colleague, writing notes and saving these notes in my paper folder. And lastly, I will have ideas throughout the day, which I will first jot down on a piece of paper, before transferring them into Excel. Weeks go by, and when I try to retrieve the information, more often than not, I can’t find what I am looking for without spending a considerable amount of time.

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

This is where Evernote comes into play. Evernote is a web-based application that can be accessed from anywhere. No matter where you are, what type of information you are capturing or even the format the information is in, you can store it all in one place online.

“Really?” You might ask. Let me show you what I am talking about by looking at Evernote’s features.

Evernote’s Main Features

1. Capturing Everything – no matter which format the information is in:

You can save web pages, documents, or just snippets of web pages and documents. In addition, you can take pictures of your handwritten notes, business cards, interesting things you see throughout your day and save them in the same place. You can also create notes that include ideas and to-do lists. You can even text or twitter notes to your Evernote account and have them automatically saved.

You start out by creating an online Evernote account – a simple login name and password process. The second step is then to download Evernote’s web clipper which will add a button to your internet browser (Evernote supports most popular browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari). Now every time you are on a website worth saving, you just click the button and it automatically ads it to your Evernote’s account. You have the option to have the URL, the full web page or only an extract of the web page saved. If you use Microsoft Outlook, this application will also add a button to Outlook – so that every time there is an email you’d like to save to your Evernote’s account, you can do that too with the press of a button.

The third step is to download Evernote for your operating system (Evernote supports Windows and Mac). This way, you can synchronize your online account with a desktop version that you can access even when you aren’t online.

2. Having notes automatically organized:

One of the great features about Evernote is that you don’t have to organize your notes in any way or even use tags for them to be organized. Evernote’s handwriting recognition and digital ink technology enables the indexing of all pieces of information that you save to Evernote – no matter the format. What that means is if you take pictures of handwritten notes, for example, Evernote is able to index each individual word of your notes and make it searchable.

But if you still prefer some do-it-yourself organization, Evernote provides the option of adding tags and comments to your notes. In addition, you can create different folders called notebooks. This can be especially handy if you want to share certain notes with team members, but keep other notes private.

3. Using only keywords to search for information:

The easiest way to retrieve your notes, is to use the search bar and type in keywords. For example, I might be looking for articles that I saved around blogger outreach campaigns (campaigns that try to convince bloggers to write about your products). So, I could type in the word, “blogger”, and the search results automatically display all notes that include the word, “blogger”. I would then continue to type in “outreach” and the results set gets smaller and smaller. It is a very intuitive and easy process that saves you a lot of time – no more wasted time digging through all your paper folders and computer files!

In addition to the computer-based applications mentioned above, Evernote also offers Evernote for iPhone, Blackberry and other smart phones.

The basic version of Evernote is free, but it limits your monthly upload allowance to 40 MB. In addition, file synchronization under the free version is limited for images, audio, ink and PDF’s. You can upgrade to the premium version for only $5 a month, which I think is really reasonable. You’ll get additional upload allowance, no synchronization restriction and premium customer service with it. I am personally still using the free version, but can see myself upgrading in the next couple of months. Evernote just makes my life so much easier – I am definitely hooked!

Right now, the one criticism I have is the limited importing functionality. The only information you can import is from Google Notebook – none of the social bookmarking sites, such as delicious, digg, etc., seem to be supported.

In any case, I would highly recommend trying Evernote to everyone – it is such a great time saver.

Enjoy checking it out!